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Building a Good Reputation as a Trading Partner

by Liz Carey

Since 1956, NPAworldwide has helped foster split placements between recruiters. But membership in and of itself is not a simple ticket to splits – you have to build relationships within the network by fostering trust and communication.

Here are a few tips on how to become a trusted partner in a split network:

1. Share openly and freely – Some recruiters think it’s best practice to work their client’s job reqs first, and if after a few weeks they can’t fill it, to then share it with trading partners and expect them to deliver miracle results. This will backfire. Now you have wasted time in which your trading partner could have provided a great candidate (who might now be gone), and you have made your client wait.  Posting your jobs immediately for trading partners to help with will yield better results and it will really impress your client when you can present candidates in less than 24 hours. Successful split recruiters know that sharing half of a fee is better than no fee at all. They openly share their best candidates and jobs, and treat their partners “fair and square.”

2. Share only good, qualified job reqs – Don’t hoard your best positions and only share the ones you don’t want to work due to low fee or salary, impossible-to-please client, long hiring process, client who is bad at feedback, etc. If you don’t want to work it, it’s not worth your trading partners’ time either. If a trading partner has a bad experience with you because they wasted time working on a job of yours that wasn’t vetted, they likely will not work with you in the future, when you desperately need help with another role.

3. Share on-target candidates – Don’t send speculative candidates that have not been qualified for a partner’s current opening. Nobody wants to be spammed with resumes they didn’t ask for and don’t match any of their current positions. And if you have a really great candidate that is a match for your partner’s job, don’t sit on them hoping to place them yourself for a full fee… you might miss out on a great split and end up with nothing. When you do send along a candidate, make sure you know the candidate and understand their motivation for change, income expectations, etc.

4. Provide all the info you can – We have found that recruiters who aren’t open and honest tend to have a hard time building relationships and finding success, as trading partnerships are all about communication. Provide the client’s name, the job location, preferred talent pools, budgeted salary and benefits, terms (fee, payment schedule, guarantee period, etc), and any information you can to help an exporter find the right fit for your role. Withholding information doesn’t help, and just makes it seem like you are untrustworthy.

5. Communicate, communicate, communicate – The #1 problem we hear is lack of communication. We have never heard of a situation where someone communicates “too much.” So always, always keep your trading partner in the loop. If you are an exporter and have told an importer you are working on their job, but haven’t come up with any candidates… let them know! It’s better to be up-front and let them know you are still working on it, or conversely don’t think you can spend any more time on it, than to leave them hanging. If you are an importer and an exporter has sent you a candidate that is not a fit, let them know… and let the know why. Or, let them know you have sent the candidate to the client, but haven’t heard back. Acknowledgement is better than no response at all. Do not allow others to continue investing time and resource when you are holding important information on the status.

When working with a trading partner, it’s important to treat them as an extension of your own office. Set expectations up front, compromise is a good thing, and communication solves most recruiting mishaps.

Tags: split placement partnerships | Posted in: Split Placements

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